Unknown UK crime writer Simon Beckett wows Europe

STEP aside, J K Rowling and Ian McEwan. Last year's bestselling British fiction writer in continental Europe was a former odd-job man from Sheffield who is little known in his own country.

Simon Beckett, 49, did not find literary success until his mid-forties, but he is now mobbed at book readings in Germany and recognised at airports in Scandinavia.

In 2009, Whispers of the Dead, his latest book, sold 300,000 copies in hardback alone in Germany and about 200,000 more copies elsewhere. It also reached No 2 in Poland and was a bestseller in Sweden and Italy.

In Britain, by contrast, it crept in as No 9 for one week last February in The Sunday Times top 10 hardback fiction chart and then, for one…

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